Museum working party 28th July 2022

Another bright dry morning in Tywyn that allowed three jobs to be progressed. Andy Sheffield painted the bare timber of the Corris mail waggon headstock with primer, Charles Benedetto applied a generous coat of wood preservative to the freshly stripped sides of the new no. 136 frame and John Olsen continued to bash off the rust from the inside surface of the splayside wagon door.

At coffee time John parted company with the working party as Chris Grimes of the GRMT had arrived with his wife to measure up the Baldwin whistle off Peggy for a possible replica to be made.

After a spot of refreshments Chris and John went up to the Slater Room to begin work on the whistle. They were joined by Luke Ryan who was to perform a photogrammetric survey of the whistle by taking a series of high resolution digital images of the whistle before any dis-assembly was attempted. Once this was completed we discovered that the two nuts holding the bell in position were only finger tight and easily removed, during which it was noted that the brass nut, although badly scored, still had the WD symbol and legend stamped into it.

The bell did not slide off as it was threaded but it could not be fully removed due to damage to the threads on the central steel pin. However the larger gap did allow us to peer inside the bell and discover that the top was a shaped casting held in place by four rivets. An attempt to unscrew the central pin was halted by its clearly rusted condition so photos were taken of the internal details before screwing the bell back down and re-attaching the two nuts. A full set of measurements was made and a series of photos with a ruler in the picture for scale measurements to be taken at Chris’s leisure.

The rest of the team enjoyed an extended coffee break with Ann McCanna and Mike Green before Andy departed and Charles came to see the whistle close up. With the whistle safely back in the display case Chris took his leave from us and we packed our tools away.

Photos by John Olsen